From the Middle Jurassic onwards persistent igneous activity in the southern Andes around 46 °S was controlled by easterly dipping subduction along the Pacific margin. Cogenetic plutonic rocks belonging to the Patagonian batholith, and calc-alkaline volcanics ranging from basaltic andesites to rhyolitic tuffs and ignimbrites are the principal products. Erosion of the primary volcanics has led at various times to the development of thick volcaniclastic sequences, for example in the Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary Divisadero formation. The Coyhaique region marks the northerly extension of a narrow back-arc basin in which the marine Neocomian successions accumulated. Volcaniclastics from the island arc, which presumably lay to the west, are intercalated with the sediments. Although the marine basin was short-lived a mildly extensional back-arc regime may have existed through much of Mesozoic-Recent times. Widespread basalt-rhyolite volcanism on the eastern side of the cordillera seems to have been associated with this tectonic environment. Remnants of the Patagonian basalt plateau at latitude 45-47 °S extend from the Argentine-Chile frontier to Lago Colhue Huapi. Four principal age and compositional groups have been distinguished in the lavas, (i) The oldest, which are about 80 Ma, occur in sections at Senguerr and Morro Negro. They are almost exclusively tholeiitic, but show some calc-alkaline affinities and resemble in other respects basalts from marginal basins, (ii) The second group (57-43 Ma) occur in the lower part of the Chile Chico section with a compositional spread from olivine tholeiites through alkali basalts to one occurrence of a basanite. (iii) The upper part of the main plateau sequence, where the flows are in the range 25-9 Ma, are dominantly of alkali basalt composition, (iv) Post-plateau flows from small cinder cones on the surface of the plateau range in age from
ca.
4 Ma to 0.2 Ma or less. They are mostly highly undersaturated basanites, with occasional leucite basanites, enriched in incompatible elements. A few of the earlier tholeiites with calc-alkali traits may have been closely associated with subduction or marginal basin processes. The younger lavas are more alkalic intraplate types generated in the remote back-arc extensional zone.
In most porphyry systems the obscuring effects of hydrothermal processes and subsequent alteration, along with limited exposure of source rocks, preclude a detailed understanding of how and where metals and volatiles were derived. However, in this study we examine melt inclusions which have escaped alteration and that sampled all of the phases coexisting in the magma, in late-and postmineral rhyolitic units from the Río Blanco Cu-Mo deposit, Chile. These inclusions demonstrate the existence of a volatile-rich melt, the exsolution from it of an aqueous volatile-rich phase, initially as melt + vapor bubble emulsions, and the disruption of these emulsions into melt and primary magmatic fluids. Trapping of these emulsions may explain the occurrence of melt inclusions containing widely varying proportions of melt and aqueous fluid found at Río Blanco. We demonstrate the sequestering of metals into the exsolved volatile phases and the derivation from these of possible ore-forming hydrothermal fluids, with particular reference to the implications for metal transport. Melt inclusions show differences between adjacent comagmatic intrusions that may be directly related to the extent of mineralization of the respective bodies. In one of the Río Blanco postmineral rhyolite bodies melt inclusions show exsolution of the volatile-rich phase but only minor evidence of trapping of a metal-rich vapor. In contrast, inclusions from an adjacent late mineral rhyolite body show similar volatile phase exsolution but also provide evidence of ponding of metal-rich hydrothermal fluids during the final stages of cooling.
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